Lisa is just your average high school student, except this particular teenage girl bares the blunt carnage of on and offline bullying. From her extreme bulimia to her sexual orientation, Lisa absorbs daily taunting from her peers in a merciless presentation of harassment and she has lost the connect between all of her close and dearest friends, even her childhood friend Andrew, the boy living next door, betrays her trust and privacy. Nobody seems to care about whether Lisa lives or dies, except for one individual who has taken an interest in Lisa and her situation. A mysteriously beautiful woman, who goes by the name of Destiny, befriends the teen, offering her hand in friendship as well as physical intimacy, but when Destiny reveals herself as Satan, Lisa is offered a trade that’ll not only benefit Lisa’s status and exact revenge on all who have done Lisa wrong but will also require an enigmatic desire of terrible consequences from the unholy beast. As Lisa soul hangs in the balance, she’s stuck between an deal with the devil and the evil bestowed upon her by her schoolmates.

“Devil’s Domain” is the 2016 new age horror from writer-director Jared Cohn. The New York born Cohn, known for his various contributions in the direct-to-video horror market, attempts his taste for horror by commingling the ongoing social issue of high school cyber bullying with a polished satanic spin. Cohn’s depiction of bullying, though a bit exaggerated, radiates with a lot of truth with the way kids nowadays treat each other from conniving behind their backs to exploit their privacy to straight-to-the-face insults. The way in Cohn constructs Lisa’s responses and reactions to all of that tormenting punishment is more-or-less accurate, if that’s fair to say, as Lisa is reclusive to her well-decked out room, showers with a hint of self-inflicted cutting, and attempts to fit in by committing dangerous acts of being thin.

Conscripted to tackle such a burdened role is Madi Vodane with “Devil’s Domain” being her only film to credit. Though Cohn squeaks by with the proper junctions at which a trouble teen might take, I can’t fathom actress Madi Vodane looking the part of the bullied Lisa. The whole scenario feels like how “Not Another Teen Movie” spoofed “She’s All That” with a good looking young girl portraying the unwilling participant of high school oppression and to top it off, Cohn has Vodane prance and lounge in her underwear for a good portion of the film, making Lisa’s plight even more harder to swallow. Lisa even partakes in a four-way with three scantily-cladded women in a devil manifested fantasy with one of the women being “Ratpocalypse’s” Linda Bella as Destiny/Satan. The French born Bella eagerly takes on the role of Satan in a familiarity akin to Elizabeth Hurley in “Bedazzled.” In the beginning when Bella comes onto the scene as the Devil, the supermodel statured actress is tucked into a skin tight, short skirt party dress wearing a long horned and barbarically cool satan latex mask. As she dances seductively toward her first victim Lexi (Molly Nolan) before commanding her minions to rip her to shreds with a chainsaw, the first thought was how interesting and intriguing this portrayal of Satan might be in Cohn’s film, but the character quickly becomes conventional, less evilly frisky as the story unravels around Lisa, and transforms more into a more grislier version of a trickster devil that we’ve all seen before. “Reservoir Dogs” and “The Hateful Eight” star Michael Madsen headlines the film despite being just a familiar face playing a side role of unimportance as Lisa’s sketchy, but understanding step-dad. As much as he tries and as much as I love him for it, Madsen can’t grasp being uncool, can’t fathom being understanding, and knows more about anger, thrills, and being the tough guy in the room. There other characters, played by Zack Kozlow, Kelly Erin Decker, Desanka Julia ilic, and others, but they come up short with sorely underdeveloped worth that they’re offed even before getting to know who they are and why we, as viewers, should care about them.

Cohn and his special effects techs bring some gore to the table in a few over-the-top kill scenes that show promise early on, but the blood flows tamer after Bella’s Devil character drives a machete over-and-over into one of the cruel schoolgirls at a kegger party. Also, when Destiny morphs into her true self, a wide wing-spanned and hideously grotesque Balthazar, played by a shorter actress named Angie Stevenson, the effect hardly sells itself, but Stevenson, I must admit, looks great in an elaborate, if not slightly Halloween-esque, costume accompanied with a set of razor sharp dentures on top of her bat-like outfit. However, one scene reaches new heights when the devil, though female in true form, rapes one of the female characters from behind in a show of pure malicious dominance that leaves a cold sweat and a gloomy mood over the treatment of dumped upon characters to whom never really dig themselves out of that deep hole from which they start, but rather they lay stagnant throughout without any hint of redemption. So you can say the whole story peters out after the apex of the she-devil climaxing because even though that particular moment is pivotal, the outcome briefly captures the meaningful intention as the message of the entire film becomes utterly lost and not anymore about resolving cyber bullying.

MVDVisual delivers the Cleopatra Entertainment production of “Devil’s Domain” on high definition Blu-ray. The unrated, 91 minute runtime of the 2.39:1 presentation is stored on a region free MPEG-4 AVC (BD 25). The image palette goes through a score of colored filters, from a scorching red to an intense blue, that removes much of the detailed definition, but natural coloring and skin tones do emerge from unfiltered sequences and bring full definition to the scene. The English Dolby Digital 5.1 track heavily promotes Cleopatra Records music talent for obvious reasons, such as Iggy and The Stooges, DMX, and Onyx. However, much of the track looses transitional traction between layers that abruptly pop in and out. The dialogue comes out clean and coherent. Extras include a making of featurette entitled “The Devil Made Me Do It,” a slideshow, the red carpet premiere featuring brief cast and crew interviews, and the theatrical trailer. Despite having gleaming moments of pure demonic appeal and a taste from many women in many undergarments, “Devil’s Domain” looses a bit of ground covering the topic of severe high school abuse and cyber bullying and doesn’t have the stamina to keep out from being a candy-coated horror film.

See Michael Madsen as a Step Father in “Devil’s Domain!”